Gleaning Ruth

A Biblical Heroine and Her Afterlives

Jennifer L. Koosed

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781570039836
• eBook ISBN: 9781611172058
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The biblical story of Ruth celebrates the power to begin life anew, to gather what has been scattered, to glean what one needs. In this original approach to understanding an ancient love story, Jennifer L. Koosed crafts a multifaceted portrait of the Old Testament character of Ruth and of the demanding agricultural world in which her story unfolds. Highlighting the most complex aspects of the book—the relationships Ruth has with her mother-in-law, Naomi; sister-in-law, Orpah; future husband, Boaz; and infant son, Obed—Koosed explores the use of pairings to define Ruth's aspirational fortitude. Koosed also touches on the narrative's questions of sexuality, kinship, and law as well as the metaphoric activities of harvest that serve to advance the plot and illuminate the social and geographic context of Ruth's tale. From the private world of women to the public world of men, Koosed guides readers through the book of Ruth's revealing glimpses into the sociology of the ancient Hebrew world. The study concludes with a discussion of the postbiblical fascination with Ruth and her later representations in a variety of literary and visual media.

Koosed's approach is eclectic, employing a host of methodologies from philology and theology to literature, folklore, and feminism. Thoughtful of the interests of both scholarly and lay audiences, Koosed presents inviting and compelling new insights into one of the Old Testament's most enigmatic characters.

•1•

GLEANING

I have harvested more than I have gleaned. The season would begin with the distinctive crank of the rusty orange-red tractor, which would shutter and spark into life then slowly clunk out to the back acres where we had the vegetable gardens. I would perch on the wheel rim, riding with my father as he performed his one agricultural task—overturning the soil, plowing the fields. Afterward he would fade into the background, and my mother and my sister would emerge and we would plant, weed, tend, harvest—another two generations of women in the field.

The story of Ruth is beautifully crafted, an idyll in four elegant movements.¹ A family immigrates to a new country in search of food. While there the sons marry local women. Over the course of time both the father (Elimelech) and the sons (Mahlon and Chilion) die, leaving the three women alone. Bereft of husband and sons, Naomi decides to leave Moab and return to her home country of Judah. At first her daughters-in-law follow her, intending to remain by her side. Faced, however, with the discouragement of Naomi as well as her sage advice (there is nothing for you with me but hardship; stay with your own mother and find a new husband who can give you a family), one daughter-in-law, Orpah, returns to her own mother’s house. Ruth, the other daughter-in-law, journeys on, refusing to leave Naomi’s side. Chapter 1 ends with Ruth and Naomi arriving at Naomi’s home village of Bethlehem.

Chapter 2 tells the tale of the two poor women. They arrive in Bethlehem with nothing and thus must rely on the ancient social welfare systems in order to eat. Ruth goes out into the fields, happening upon the barley harvest of a rich man who, unbeknownst to her, is a distant relative of her dead father-in-law. She begins to glean. Boaz, the rich relative, arrives, and she catches his eye. He speaks to her, grants her special favors and special protections, and so her gleaning is bounteous. When she returns to Naomi at the end of the day and recounts the story, she learns that Boaz is a relative. She continues to glean in his fields through both the barley and the wheat harvests.

Once the harvests are complete Naomi devises a plan. She instructs Ruth to sneak up to the threshing floor after the men have worked, eaten, drunk, and fallen asleep. Ruth is to approach Boaz, uncover his feet, and wait for his instruction. He awakes with a start and she reveals herself to him, asking for his protection as next of kin. Flattered, he vows to come to her aid—but then reveals to her that there is another man who is a closer relative than he. He asks her to stay the night with the promise that he will resolve the matter in the morning. At the end of chapter 3, as dawn breaks, he fills her apron with barley and sends her home to Naomi.

The focus of chapter 4 shifts from the world of women and the private setting to the public world of men. Boaz goes to the city gates where the men of the community sit and dispense judgment. When the other relative passes by, Boaz calls him over and explains the matter at hand—Naomi has land that needs to be redeemed by a kinsman, but she also has a daughter-in-law from Moab. At first interested in the land, the closer relative ultimately declines both the land and the woman. Boaz then declares himself the redeemer of the land and the taker of Ruth. The two marry, a son is born and named Obed, and the narrative ends with a genealogy connecting the story of Ruth to the family of David. Out of famine, bereavement, and poverty comes a future royal dynasty. A story that begins with the death of sons ends with the birth of sons.

The story of Ruth is beautifully crafted, but the narrative is not as simple as first appears. Tod Linafelt opens his commentary on Ruth with the observation: “The more time I have spent with the book the more convinced I have become that it is exceedingly complex and ambiguous.”² As the book, so the woman: Ruth’s character is unsettled and unsettling.³ The questions about her character are not just the questions of readers millennia later, uncertain now of meaning. Rather, these questions are integral to her character. Both Boaz and Naomi ask Ruth, “Who are you?” at key points in the narrative (Ruth 3:9, 3:16), an inquiry not easily answered by simple proximity.⁴

Despite the common characterization of her narrative as an “idyll” and the familiar “fairytale” elements, the suggestion of Ruth’s complexity should not be surprising. These four short chapters of scripture have continued to engage and interest readers for millennia, a feat that would be impossible were the title character flat and the story simple. In fact the illusion of simplicity may seduce the casual reader into deeper reflection; intriguing personalities do draw others into their world.

Linafelt continues: “The task of the commentator is to enable the reader to apprehend and negotiate the uncertainties of the text and, when possible, to demonstrate how these uncertainties are not pesky problems to be solved but rather are integral to the narrative art of the book.”⁵ Following Linafelt’s lead, I explore rather than explain the many facets of the personality of Ruth.

Doppelgangers and Other Doublings

The writer of Ruth employs a doubling motif in various ways at various levels throughout the narrative. First, most of the characters are presented in pairs: Naomi and Elimelech, Mahlon and Chilion, Ruth and Orpah.⁶ Boaz has his pair in the unnamed relative whose claim to Elimelech’s property precedes Boaz’s claim. Even Obed may have a double. Jack M. Sasson argues that the peculiarities at the end of the book can be explained by positing an original story in which Ruth gave birth to two children—Obed and an unnamed brother.⁷ Important moments in the plot often turn on the doubles making diametrically opposed decisions: Orpah turns back to Moab while Ruth continues on to Judah (1:14); Boaz accepts what the other relative declines (4:6).

On a deeper level, several of the narrative motifs rely on binary oppositions that structure the plot of Ruth. Elimelech’s family first leave Bethlehem because they are full of family but empty of food, and Naomi returns empty of family but, since the famine has subsided, she comes home to a full “House of Bread” (the literal meaning of Bethlehem). The interplay between fullness and emptiness continues throughout the narrative. Other binary oppositions—women/men, poor/rich, threshing floor / before the gate, private space / public space—are also integral to the plot.

The very way language works in the book of Ruth is through multiple levels of doubling. First there is a poetic substratum that underlies much of the spoken dialogue in Ruth, and many of the dialogues are structured in couplets.⁸ For example, Ruth’s first speech—her passionate plea to Naomi (1:16–17)—contains six poetic couplets. Second, the author of Ruth doubles meaning through wordplay, especially punning.⁹ Third, a “striking characteristic of Ruth” is the number of key words that occur only twice.¹⁰ Examples include lads (1:5, 4:16), security (1:9, 3:1), lodge (1:16, 3:13), brought back / restorer (1:21, 4:15), empty (1:21, 3:17), covenant brother / circle (2:1, 3:2), substance/worthy (2:1, 3:11), wings (2:12, 3:9).¹¹ As Edward Campbell argues in his commentary: “Double occurrences of the same word are not simply a matter of repetition; they constitute brackets, as plot problems are transferred from one set of circumstances to another, from difficulty to be overcome to resolution of that difficulty.”¹²

In addition these doublings form inclusio, bracketing devices. Note that with each pair enumerated above, the first instance is toward the beginning of the book (either in chapter 1 or 2) and the second occurrence is toward the end (either in chapter 3 or 4). Campbell suggests that the entire narrative is structured through the use of smaller inclusio and chiasm in the construction of the larger ones that frame the entire narrative.¹³ The smaller units are marked by the doubling and reversal of other word pairs—El Shaddai / Yahweh in 1:20–21a becomes Yahweh / El Shaddai in 1:21b, for example.

Finally, there are peculiarities in the Hebrew that involve doubles. In several instances when Ruth and Naomi are discussed together, instead of the expected feminine plural, a masculine plural is used (examples include “with you” in 1:8). Such instances may be the result of a possible dual feminine archaic form (which is what Campbell argues¹⁴). An equally unprecedented plural form of the word for legs or feet is used when there is discussion of Boaz’s body in chapter 3 of the book of Ruth (3:7).

One way to read these multiple pairings and doublings is that they encode the centrality of relationship. Relationship has often been cited as one of the primary themes of Ruth based on the plot alone—two women from two religions, two cultures, two ethnicities join forces to cross over from one country to another and see what life brings. For example, Judith A. Kates and Gail Twersky Reimer introduce their edited volume of essays on Ruth by noting that Ruth’s “central figures are women, its central story (or stories) is relationship.”¹⁵ In general, character is not formed in isolation and cannot be understood outside of interaction with others. In a book that foregrounds relationship in theme, plot, and structure, this is even more apparent. In order to explore the personality of Ruth, it is necessary to explore the personalities of Orpah, Naomi, Boaz, and Obed as they interact with and help to define Ruth’s own character. The four primary chapters of my work are organized around these four central relationships.

I have entered into a new series of relationships too. When I elected to write this volume, my greatest fear was that it would be a dull read. What could I add to the study of Ruth; what could I say that has not already been said? I am deeply in debt to the previous scholarship on Ruth with which I have been in dialogue. It was only when I gave up the spring hope of planting to embrace the fall reality of gleaning from somebody else’s bounty that this book began to come together.

Feminist interpreters have been particularly interested in the book of Ruth, and I have been particularly influenced by their approaches. Feminist interpretation of the book of Ruth formally begins with Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible, published in 1898.¹⁶ Stanton’s reading falls far short of many of today’s academic standards. She assumes the historical reliability of the story, even the historicity of Matthew’s genealogy listing Rahab as Boaz’s mother. She speculates freely about the daily lives of Ruth and Naomi in Bethlehem, including how they spent their evenings together (dining on “herb tea, bread and watercresses” and talking about practical matters¹⁷) and whether or not they kept pets (yes—they had “doves, kids and lambs”¹⁸). Finally she is guilty of certain anachronisms (picturing Obed’s baptism¹⁹). Yet in terms of her focus on the women and the strength of their relationship, Stanton is decidedly feminist in her positive analysis of this biblical book.

As innovative as Stanton’s work on the Bible was in the nineteenth century, and as prevalent as feminist biblical scholarship is today, there is no direct line from The Woman’s Bible to, say, The Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by feminist biblical critics Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe and published in 1992. Stanton did not found a school of thought, nor were her biblical interpretations engaged by her successors in the women’s movement. Women in the academy may have given some encouragement to the project, but they did not participate in the committee she formed to examine the biblical text, nor did they later build on her work.²⁰ Traditional historical-critical studies did not focus on gender in Ruth despite the prominence of the female characters and their relationship. Even Louise Pettibone Smith, one of the first female modern biblical scholars, wrote on Ruth but did not explore the gendered aspects of the text.²¹ It was not until the revival of the women’s movement in the 1960s (second-wave feminism) that feminist biblical scholarship emerged once more.

Since Stanton’s early foray into feminist readings of Ruth, the book has been met with mixed reviews in feminist commentary, exemplified by two early treatments: articles by Phyllis Trible and Esther Fuchs.²² Phyllis Trible’s 1976 essay on Ruth, which she then expanded into a chapter in her 1978 God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, is the first full feminist analysis that regards Ruth positively. Much like Stanton’s interpretation but without the assumptions of historicity or the conservative and traditional language, Trible’s essay portrays Ruth as a model of hesed and the bond between Ruth and Naomi to be primary.²³ The word hesed appears throughout the book of Ruth, applied to Ruth’s actions primarily. It is, however, notoriously difficult to translate because there is no one English word that captures the full meaning of the Hebrew. The term encompasses actions and attitudes of love, kindness, mercy, care.²⁴ Ruth embodies all of these values in her interactions with the other characters in the book.

Esther Fuchs’s work is an example of the negative evaluation some feminist interpreters have given Ruth. Fuchs makes the connection between Ruth’s journey and Abraham’s. Yet for Fuchs Ruth leaves her home and accepts Yahweh for the love of Naomi, not because of her own personal faith commitments. Other commentators (including the rabbinical ones) hold Ruth in higher regard because she abandons her home and accepts Yahweh without the kind of direct contact and assurance of reward that Abraham is given in Genesis 12. For example, Trible writes: “Not even Abraham’s leap of faith surpasses this decision of Ruth’s. . . . There is no more radical decision in all the memories of Israel.”²⁵ In contrast, Fuchs regards her commitment as derivative: “Ruth, on the other hand, is a means in the process of restoring man’s name to the world; that of Mahlon, her husband, and of Elimelech, her father-in-law. Her battle is not for monotheism [like Abraham’s] but for the continuity of patriarchy.”²⁶ All of Ruth’s actions, including the subversive and unconventional ones, are in the service of bearing a male child to continue the line of the fathers. “Thus, Ruth is the paradigmatic upholder of patriarchal ideology.”²⁷

The last ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Gleaning
• 2 Agricultural Interlude No. 1
• 3 Ruth and Orpah
• 4 Ruth and Naomi
• 5 Agricultural Interlude No. 2
• 6 Ruth and Boaz
• 7 Agricultural Interlude No. 3
• 8 (Ruth) and Obed
• 9 The Story Begins Where It Ends
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Scriptural Index
• Subject Index
• About the Author